Back in 2000 when I first moved to Ferndale, I was still shooting film predominately, and the place I took my film was Chromogenics, in Fortuna. Greg Rumney, the owner of Chromogenics is an avid collector of vintage photographs. Behind the counter was a photo taken in the Ozarks of 4 very gruff looking hillbillies. It is very hard to look at the photo and not smile, it’s such a brilliant depiction of the stereotypical group of backwoods hillbillies.

Greg told me it was his best seller and at first I didn’t believe him. But when I had my gallery on Main Street we sold a lot of those hillbilly photos for Greg. Since then Greg has gotten out of the film business and concentrates on selling prints from his collection. His business name changed too, he now goes by The Old Photo Guy.

I thought it would be fun to make my own version of the photo with a few of the local Ferndale characters. Andy Doehner, George Enos, and Richard Harpham joined me in recreating the photo, using Fernbridge as our location.

Since I did this photo just for fun, prints of my version aren’t for sale, but you can view and purchase the real version at Greg’s website at www.oldphotoguy.com. I did exhibit this photo at the fair and it received a second place ribbon in the Professional Digital Enhanced class.